Rotterdam 2024 Preview: Recommendations

The Tiger Competitions

The IFFR has several competitions for short films and long films, the most prestigious of which are the tigers. A massive amount of shorts are shown in six blocks for easy viewing and the selection is always eclectic.

Fourteen films have been selected for the long films part, and all of them are world premières. Have a look at which tickle your fancy in this list here..

Picture copyright Anne Reitsma.

The opening film: Head South

New Zealander Jonathan Ogilvie opened the festival yesterday evening with his kind-of autobiographical film Head South, in which Ed Oxenbould plays eh... well, Jonathan Ogilvie when younger apparently. A schoolboy who so desperately wants to be cool that he lies about being in a post-punk band, to the point that he actually has to create that band.

Review following soon.

Full River Red

Palace intrigue? Massive armies? Murder mystery? Slapstick comedy? Zhang Yimou's newest sounds like a lot of fun and his Shadow is a favorite of mine. So count me in!

Review following soon (intrigue, armies, maybe a murder mystery and definitely slapstick comedy will decide who gets to write it).

13 Bombs

An action-packed police thriller from Indonesia which is loosely based on a real blackmail attempt which happened a few years ago. When terrorists threaten to blow up Indonesia's capital city Jakarta unless they're paid a vast amount of money in Bitcoin, the secret service enlists two cryptocurrency nerds to try and figure out a way to expose the criminals.

Slide

Bill Plympton is a legend, and he is visiting the festival, bringing his latest film Slide and giving a masterclass. That's it. That's the recommendation.

Krazy House

The directors of the New Kids movies are back, and they're mad! Or 'krazy' rather! Together with Nick Frost they have created their first English-language film, one which divided audiences in Sundance earlier this week. Hell, our Mel Valentin hated it (see his review here).

But hey, I'm curious and want to see for myself what the hubbub is about.

Mars Express

Science fiction is an excellent genre to tackle some of the big existential questions, like "what does it mean to be human?", which comes up often it seems. Here, the French take an animated stab at it and... well, according to our Shelagh Rowan-Legg, they made it a good one! Read her review here.

Witte Wieven

Made as an episode as part of a Dutch genre television series, director Didier Konings works wonders with his budget and created something which would not have seemed amiss in Kier-La Janisse's folk horror boxset a few years back. Spoken in authentic medieval Low Saxon and based on actual Dutch mythology, this is something special indeed. Review coming soon!

Super Manetti Brothers

Marco and Antonio Manetti are two Italian directors who have directed a slew of great Italian genre flicks since 2010. Many of these will be shown in a retrospective here in Rotterdam, including their recent Diabolik trilogy. The brothers are here in person as well, and their public interview promises to be very entertaining.

Blue Giant

No IFFR without anime, say it loud and say it louder! This year we have Tachikawa Yuzuru's feature about a boy who wants to become one of the greatest jazz saxophone players, and the struggles he encounters when moving to Tokyo. It's based on a famous manga and I like Tachikawa's work, so I will be checking this out.

Boléro

This is a film by Anne Fontaine about how Maurice Ravel's (in)famous classical piece came to be. It's a world première so that is literally all I know at this point. Her previous biopic Coco avant Chanel definitely has its fans though, and Anne Fontaine is a featured guest at the festival this year.

The Closing Film: La Luna

An oo-la-la comedy coming from Malaysia, poking at authoritarian and religious rigidity? Let's just say this was not on my bingo list.

A small village is governed with strict rules, but when an up-town woman starts a shop there selling sexy modern ladies' underwear, it doesn't just upset many of the locals and the mayor, it also becomes a safe haven for the women in the neighbourhood.